According to market statistics, the number of connected mobile devices, including mobile phones and tablets, has already exceeded the population of our planet. Smartphones and tablets have outsold personal computers for the first time in the fourth quarter of 2011, while by the fourth quarter of 2014, the unit shipment volume of tablets alone is exceeding cumulative personal and business PC shipments. Market researchers are forecasting that by 2016, there will be over ten billion Internet-connected mobile devices in the hands of end users, including approximately eight billion smartphones and tablets, while by 2017, about 87% of market share of smart connected devices is expected to belong to smartphones and tablets compared with just 13% for desktop and mobile PCs.
Smartphones and tablets have become full-feature computers with high resolution screens, capable of running web browsers and native applications created for various mobile platforms such as iOS, Android, Windows, BlackBerry, etc. As of June, 2014, the Apple Inc.'s App Store offered for download over 1.2 million applications for iOS, of which almost 50% were optimized for iPad tablets; by mid-2014, users have downloaded over 75 billion copies of iOS applications and spent over $1 B in purchases from the App Store. At the end of 2014, the App Store included software applications in 24 main categories with hundreds of subcategories, covering every area of modern life from games, education and news to healthcare, productivity and weather. According to different estimates, a regular smartphone or tablet user on the iOS platform downloads and installs on average 40-100 iPhone or iPad applications within just a couple years of usage of these devices.
Smartphones and tablets have become mainstream computing devices that may be used to store important private and business information in various client side and cloud based applications, such as online and offline notebooks created in the Evernote software and service, developed by Evernote Corporation of Redwood City, Calif. Accordingly, data security on mobile devices represents a growing user requirement. Applications are being developed that employ both traditional techniques, such as using a pin number to unlock a device, and advanced techniques, such as using a fingerprint or an iris scanner and other biometric authentication technologies.
A notable change in operating computing devices in the last decade has been caused by the development and proliferation of touch based user interfaces, which are currently present on vast majority of smartphones and tablets on many available platforms. A basic set of multi-touch gestures, such as one and two finger panning or scrolling, swiping for fast scrolling with inertia, single and double tapping to open applications and navigate object hierarchies, tapping and holding to initiate selection, two-finger resizing of screen objects (pinching and reverse pinching), in addition to typing on soft keyboards and modifications of the screen objects, represent a fundamental shift in the ways people acquire, process, share and digital information.
One type of touch screen technology powering a new generation of smartphones and tablets is projective capacitive technology. Multi-touch projective capacitive touch screens are designed to detect relatively large objects touching the screen, such as one or several fingertips, a large specially designed pen tip, etc. Projective capacitive technology is a grid sensor technology whereby a conductive grid under the screen glass creates an electrostatic field and senses objects in the vicinity of the screen surface by interference of the objects with the electromagnetic flux in different nodes of the grid. Other touch screen technologies, such as resistive, electromagnetic inductive, infrared, ultrasound, optical, etc. may be used and may sometimes be combined to offer enhanced touch features to end users.
Notwithstanding fast expansion of smartphone and tablet usage and growing user familiarity with new features and the touch device operation metaphor, a portion of the user base may appear disadvantaged because of users' age, physical conditions, education level or other reasons. Some users experience difficulties typing on a touch screen, which may not provide an adequate tactile feedback; other users may have issues memorizing pins and passwords and may not be able to utilize built-in protection systems. Basic touch driven operating systems may also challenge some users. Additionally, a portion of users may experience difficulties downloading and installing software applications from applications stores and making their first unassisted steps in using such applications.
Accordingly, it is important to design methods, systems and devices for assisting users in hands free authentication on smartphones and tablet devices, installations of software applications from application stores, and instructing the users on first time application usage.